Hello, I am planning to start a blog on a popular topic. I am confused as to whether to target my country (by choosing the ccTLD of the country I belong to) or to target the entire world. The content is generic and has pretty good competition in the global search results. Suppose I register a ccTLD, will it be difficult to rank in Google.com for the same term? Is it necessary that our blog be hosted in the same country that it targets?
No, it is not necessary for your blog to be hosted in the same country it targets. I have plenty of sites offering UK products that I have hosted here in the US. If your planned blog is general and would be of value to the entire world - go wide as will give you much more potential later.
Thanks for your reply. I am considering the .com. But the problem is that I cant find any good domain names at all. I haven't done SEO for a ccTLD so that it get's ranked in Google.com. Any suggestions for people who have done that? Do you think a .in domain can rank in google.com just as it's .com counterpart???
Hi, Generally speaking, domain suffix or domain hosting company would have no relationship with SEO purpose. Keywords, contents and back links would be the essential issue for SERP. have a nice day,
I doubt it, but it's possible according to who you listen to. AirForce1 is speaking the truth according to Matt Cutts. I would go with .net then. If you must get the .in, I would build for Google India rather than Google.com though. Seriously, if you had the same back link profile it wouldn't matter I'm sure, but chances are you will have a harder time finding some links with a .in vs. a .net or .com.
Do you think that we need to get .in backlinks to rank higher on Google India? Wouldnt .com or .net backlinks suffice? I am sure that getting .in backlinks would be close to impossible as I don't see many sites in this domain. the one's that are there are high profile ones and wont possible give links to my blog. Do you think that having a .in alone is enough to rank in Google India (With backlinks from .com and .net sites)??? How do you think will my site fare for Google.com? Do you think having a .com or .net is advantageous to rank well in Google.com instead of a local domain extension?
IMO .com will have little bit advantage over .in, I dont know why but Ive tried it. I did SEO on .com it required less efforts and then did SEO on same niche and same keywords with .in and .co.in but required more efforts to have rankings in global google. You can go with any domain all you need is your efforts with SEO.
I will be primarily targeting Indian readers. However 75% of my content would be generic in nature. So I cant decide on .com or .in. My question is that if we have a .in domain would it need .in or .co.in backlinks to rank well in Google India or would .com and other TLD domain backlinks be enough?